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• 10-2. Pretty much a Cotton Candy season. Enjoyable but hardly filling and a tad empty but sure as hell tastier than whatever gruel Mom slap on our plates in 2020 and 2021. As far as the way the 12-game slate played out, this season reminds us a bunch of the 2017 season – double-digit wins but none of them worth memorializing with one of those commemorative plates or coins they’re always advertising to insomniacs on TV at 3 a.m. In 2017, Penn State’s “best” win came in the dying breaths of an Instant Classic at Iowa – a team that eventually won 8 games. In 2022, Penn State’s “best” win came in the dying breaths of an Instant Classic at Purdue – a team that won its 8th game today.

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Sponsor: Whether tailgating in Happy Valley or watching the action at home, take your Saturday spread to the next level with Sauces, BBQ Dry Rubs and Bloody Mary Mix from the 409 Tailgate Club. Visit 409’s Online Store HERE.

Knowing us, of course we saved our wildest tailgate recipe of the season for last. Yes, even wilder than making pork poppable, like we did with our Kielbasa Tots creation.

Hear us out:

Peanut Butter.

Chocolate.

Chicken.

Yep, you read that right.

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Sponsor: Whether tailgating in Happy Valley or watching the action at home, take your Saturday spread to the next level with Sauces, BBQ Dry Rubs and Bloody Mary Mix from the 409 Tailgate Club. Visit 409’s Online Store HERE.

• As much as we love to b*tch about the Big Ten schedule-makers’ obvious vendetta against Penn State Football, those Excel aficionados in Chicago unknowingly did the Nittany Lions a HUGE solid by backloading the 2022 slate with a bunch of helmet-wearing sloths. Because, my goodness, recent the tidal wave of injuries on offense has forced Mike Yurcich to piece things together with duct-tape, chewed wads of Juicy Fruit, and infomercial Flex Seal – like the Nittany Lions OC is some lamented playsheet-holding MacGyver or something. It’s weird offering up this commentary considering Penn State eclipsed the 50-point mark for the first time since 2020, but this offense was a sputtering mess for a decent portion of Saturday. For much of the first half, faulty pass protection was the stick in the Nittany Lions’ bicycle spokes. Once that issue was fixed, another leak sprung – Penn State’s incomplete WR crops, down the services of safety blanket Parker Washington, couldn’t separate.

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*Please remember to click the ‘Share My Address With For The Blogy’ box when checking out so we know where to mail your gift!

• Can’t speak for the 106,000 suckers who spent their hard-earned dollars for the privilege to don a garbage bag and sit upon a soggy slice of aluminum for 4 hours but, snug and warm inside the climate-controlled confines of this overpriced condo, that might have been the most enjoyable Penn State football-viewing experience we’ve had since….gosh, 2017? Help us out here: when’s the last time Penn State thoroughly annihilated a “decent” opponent from opening kickoff to final kneel down? Damn that was fun. As we said on Twitter: Other than the future gym teacher/pharma rep. throwing the football for the Nittany Lions, Penn State looked like the greatest team in the history of the sport during the 1^st half. The defensive front 7 had Tua Light seeing ghosts, the freshmen RBs ran with a point to prove, Jake Pinegar did his best Justin Tucker impression, and James Franklin had better-than-expected form on his push-ups. A+ effort, all around.

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Sponsor: Whether tailgating in Happy Valley or watching the action at home, take your Saturday spread to the next level with Sauces, BBQ Dry Rubs and Bloody Mary Mix from the 409 Tailgate Club. Visit 409’s Online Store HERE.

As the days grow shorter, the nights turn colder, and as the holidays loom on the horizon, it’s once again time for us all to build up another Teflon-tough mental callus necessary for watching football alongside your dusty, sweater-clad relatives.

Oh it’s coming…peanut gallery comments spewing from your Werther’s Original, don’t-touch-the-thermostat, Matlock enthusiast grandparents about how today’s players are Charmin soft — what with their concern about their brains, earnest off-the-field interests, facemasks and forward passes.

As you turn to roll your eyes without detection, they’ll harken back to the Sepia Tone days of One-Platoon Football when guys played BOTH offense and defense, sucked on salt tablets when they were thirsty, then put in 14 hours mining iron ore and captured Fort Ticonderoga from the British as soon as the final whistle blew.

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Sponsor: Whether tailgating in Happy Valley or watching the action at home, take your Saturday spread to the next level with Sauces, BBQ Dry Rubs and Bloody Mary Mix from the 409 Tailgate Club. Visit 409’s Online Store HERE.

• 92.3% sure I used this topper before…but whatever. It fits: As Chumbawamba once pontificated, these Nittany Lions got knocked down, but they got up again for the second time this season, further distancing themselves from the rolling snowball of suck that was the second half of last year. With “nothing to play for” in front of a scattered, gap-riddled, British-smile of a crowd the Nittany Lions tub-thumped Indiana as if there were still pollsters to impress. The haters won’t like this, but kudos to James Franklin and the rest of the staff for erasing at least one of many troubling narratives attached to his 9-year tenure…well, for now, anyway.

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